Cold anger

I was in Portland OR for a week visiting with a friend from here who was spending several weeks up there, and a friend who lives there and who I knew from my previous life. I liked Portland, it has a lot of urban character. Lots of neighborhoods with their own distinctive personality, lots of little coffee shops and local businesses. Fun!

My friend teaches computer science at the university here and he's quite the philosopher and thinker. He's had a lot of experience trying to get girls more interested in studying technology in connection with the school, and he's spent a lot of time in Fortune 500 technology companies so he's known women in that context.

We drank a lot of wine, ate a lot of olives and cheese and talked lots about women since I'm working on this business idea aimed at them. I mentioned that I've noticed so many of us seem to lack confidence in our ability to figure stuff out. Or at least, put our ideas into action. I can't quite put my fingers on it but it seems we either fear failure to the point we don't even try, or we worry it won't be 'perfect' and so we don't try.

Of course, I can say this because those are comPLETELY the things that so get in my way from doing all I know I'm capable of. Takes one to know one. And, I'm making a generalization obviously. There are women to whom this does not apply.....although even some of the most successful women I know seem to have a lot of insecurity about their abilities even in the face of their undeniable success. I can't say the same about men, in general :)

Thomas said he had had situations where guys in his classes would raise their hands and give the wrong answers to questions several times in a row. Obviously, THEY were not suffering from fear of being wrong or fear of failure, or if they did, they didn't let it stop them. And, he'd have girls in that class who would come up afterwards and say they knew the answer. When he would ask why they didn't pipe up, they would say they didn't want to embarrass anyone.

So, I'm reading Wicked which is the story of the Wicked Witch of the West as told from her perspective. (I will tie this in, I promise, really!) Great premise in the book, not so well executed in my opinion but there is a part in there where WW of W's old nanny talks about girls needing to develop cold anger.

Cold anger is the slow burn, smoldering anger that keeps her implacable and relentless in pursuit of something. No forgiving or forgetting or turning aside. The wisdom of applying this to your anger is a little debatable of course, but it struck me that in some ways that is what Thomas and I were discussing.

Guys have egos that are not easily quenched....as most women can attest to :) Women are more sensitive about looking bad or stupid. We're taught to be perfect little ladies. We are supposed to be nice and make sure everyone is feeling OK about themselves, don't want to make anyone look bad!

I hope that my generation of women is kinda the tail end of that kind of thing. I think girls nowadays have much more opportunity to overcome that and build confidence in their ability to carry through their ideas. People are much more aware of the issue.

In the meantime, I feel I'm playing catch up. I'm coming up on the 50 mark and everything I'm doing right now is an effort to get past the craziness of not trying because I'm afraid it might not be perfect, or because I don't want to look like I don't know what I'm doing, or because I'm afraid it might fail.

I want to DO something. I want to be confident I can figure stuff out (ignoring the fear is how this will happen). I do not want to get to the end of my life and look back to see myself too fearful to have put myself out there and taken a risk. I want to experience what it's like to relentlessly pursue something to its end. I want to know I put myself and my ideas out there.

I want a dose of cold anger. Not in the anger part, life is too short for that, but in the sense of dogged persistence that doesn't allow a failure or two along the road to keep me raising my hand once more to offer an answer.